Fight and Friendship
with the Forces of Fate in Beethoven's and Brahms

PART
IV

The
Listener's Freedom from Fate

In
the permanent conflict with the forces of fate the composer gradually and
discreetly prepares his listener to desire more and more personal independence
from the forces of fate. Finally, the musical creator guides his listener
into the world of the free, into the realms of those great men who stand above
fate.

And
so, someone who struggles with the influences of the environment in the routine
of his day-to-day life, turns into someone who has realized and experienced
within himself that it is possible to personally master the powers of one's
fate.
A composer particularly successful in this musical process of knowing, of
man conquering the forces of fate, is Beethoven  and as his heir: Brahms.

In
their time, these two great musical poets had clearly identified the mass
movement of the individual capitulating to environmental, social, and ecological
influences  a fatal trend which grew from the religious glorification
of suffering.
In their music, they outlined ways and means of resolutely fighting and gloriously
winning over such self-destructive, pessimistic attitudes towards life, and
their symphonies are shining tokens of this noble human responsibility being
carried out.

While
Mozart, for example, expands the love of life of the listener to his personal
experience of immortality, Beethoven and Brahms reach the same high goal by
individually conquering fate. Thus, they point out a way which, at their time
and to the day, is regarded as the way of the resolute action  the warrior's
way to the personal realization of freedom.

While
Mozart dances with his listener on light feet through the ranks of the forces
of fate and finally transcends the limits of fate, Beethoven and Brahms teach
the listener to fight fate, but to finally recognize it as a fully autonomous,
cooperating power, and to make it a friend.

And
this personal, systematic acceptance of the forces of fate, of those individual,
social and ecological influences of the environment pressing on us, secures
the listener the unhinder-ed course through the confusion of his time, and
it teaches him to overcome fate: to transcend it  teaches him the very
personal friendship with the mighty fate.